Key Takeaways

1. A new Pew Research Center survey suggests the long decline of religion in America may have slowed — but without understanding what caused the decline, any recovery is likely to be temporary.

2. Communio’s research across more than 150,000 churchgoer surveys points to a clear pattern: faith follows family. When marriage declined, church attendance followed — roughly one generation later.

3. Approximately 80% of people sitting in church on Sunday were raised in a home where their parents stayed married. That number tells the whole story.

4. Harvard economist Raj Chetty’s research shows that having continuously married parents predicts future economic mobility — and the same principle applies to faith formation.

5. The path forward isn’t primarily political or programmatic. It’s relational. Churches that invest in strengthening marriages now are shaping the next generation of believers.

The Research: A Glimmer of Hope — With a Warning Attached

A new survey from the Pew Research Center is making waves in faith communities across the country: after decades of steady decline, religious affiliation in America may finally be leveling off.

For pastors and church leaders who have watched attendance shrink and watched young adults disengage, the news feels like a breath of fresh air.

But in a pointed op-ed published this week in The Christian Post, Communio founder and president J.P. De Gance offers a critical caution: before celebrating a recovery, we need to understand what actually drove the decline. Because if we get that wrong, any rebound will be short-lived.

His argument, built on years of data and more than 150,000 surveys of churchgoers across the country, is direct: America’s faith crisis wasn’t caused by the inevitable march of secularism. It was caused by the collapse of marriage.

The Core Finding: Faith Follows Family — And the Data Proves It

Across denominations and regions, Communio’s research reveals a striking pattern in the pews: roughly 80% of people who attend church on Sunday were raised in a home where their parents stayed married throughout their upbringing.

That single data point reframes the entire conversation about church decline.

The married, intact family began breaking down in the 1960s. About one generation later — right on schedule — religious non-affiliation began to rise as those children reached adulthood. Social scientists call this generational succession. De Gance calls it what it is: a predictable, traceable consequence.

Between 2008 and 2015, marriage and family trends began to stabilize. And now, a generation later, Pew is recording a slowdown in religious decline. The timing is not coincidental.

This is what researchers mean when they say faith is transmitted, not just taught. Children don’t primarily learn to believe in God through curriculum or programs. They learn it through the daily lived witness of a home — a father who prays, a mother who serves, two parents who keep their vows. When that home fractures, the transmission breaks.

Harvard economist Raj Chetty’s research adds another dimension: having continuously married parents is one of the strongest predictors of future economic mobility. But the same principle extends to faith. Even children raised in single-parent homes show better outcomes — spiritually and socially — when they grow up in communities where married households are the norm. Stable marriages don’t just shape individual families. They shape the neighborhoods around them.

The Counterintuitive Angle: The Church Didn’t Lose a Culture War. It Lost a Generation — at Home.

The dominant explanation for church decline over the past 40 years has been cultural: secularism won, reason replaced religion, the internet gave people alternatives. These explanations feel sophisticated. They’re also largely wrong — or at least incomplete.

The real story is more personal and more local. It happened not in the culture at large, but inside individual homes — quietly, over decades — as marriages weakened and family structures fragmented.

This reframe carries a radical implication for church strategy. If the problem is primarily cultural, the response is primarily cultural — better preaching, stronger apologetics, more compelling worship. But if the problem is primarily familial, the response must be familial too.

It means the most consequential thing a pastor can do for the next generation of believers isn’t found in a sermon series or a church marketing campaign. It’s found in the marriages of the people sitting in the pews right now. Strengthen those marriages, and you are quite literally shaping who will be in church — and who will raise children in faith — twenty years from now.

This is not a side ministry. It’s a succession strategy.

What This Means for Your Church

At Communio, this isn’t theory — it’s the foundation of everything we do.

De Gance’s op-ed captures the urgency precisely: if the Pew data reflects the stabilization of family trends from a decade ago, then the decisions churches make today about marriage ministry will show up in attendance data a generation from now. The window to act is now, not after the next decline.

Think about the couples in your congregation. The young marrieds who haven’t yet built the habits they’ll need for the hard years ahead. The mid-life couples drifting under the weight of parenting and pressure. The families where faith is vibrant in one generation — and uncertain in the next. These aren’t abstract statistics. They’re the people who showed up last Sunday.

And here’s what Barna Research — commissioned by Communio — found when it looked at how churches are responding to this reality: 72% of American churches lack a substantive marriage ministry. 74% have no ministry for newlyweds. 85% spend nothing on marriage and relationship ministry annually.

The need is enormous. The gap is measurable. And the church is the only institution in society uniquely positioned to close it — because this is, at its core, a spiritual mission, not just a social one.

The local church doesn’t just have a role in reversing the faith crisis. According to the data, it has the primary role. And it starts with treating marriage as a ministry priority, not an afterthought.

Take the Next Step

Communio partners with churches across the country to build data-informed marriage and family ministry — designed for real congregations, proven to produce results, and rooted in the conviction that strong families are how faith is passed to the next generation.

► Read J.P. De Gance’s full op-ed in The Christian Post → christianpost.com

► Explore Communio’s Nationwide Study on Faith and Relationships → communio.org/study

Credit: This post draws on J.P. De Gance’s op-ed in The Christian Post, Communio’s Nationwide Study on Faith and Relationships, Pew Research Center survey data, and research by Harvard economist Raj Chetty. Read the original op-ed here.